Turtle AI intelligence problem
Posted: 18 Dec 2013, 18:18
Off topic: Many thanks to all the people contributing to keeping this game alive and fun to play. Compared to other strategy games wz2100 has always been unique imo. I played this game a lot when it came out until the speed-bug killed the community and the competitiveness.
As far as I know the new "Turtle AI" is a Nullbot variant. With the 3.1.1 release Nullbot has sped up a lot since 3.1 (maybe there have been some improvements in the game itself too) which helps when I play the game on my older PC.
On topic: Turtle AI seems to have a huge priority for building oil rigs. I played a custom map (8p Julia something - similar to the old TeamWar maps) which has a lot of oil. Late in game when I had only 1 bot left I noticed that after an attack where I had eliminated all but one factory and most power plants that all the Turtle AI did was produce building units non-stop and sending them in different directions to uncaptured oil points which in itself is fine. But at that time it had more than 40 oil rigs already and only 2 power plants.
The empty oil spots were guarded by defence and the trucks naturally all died. The AI didn't produce a single building and never got into the game again. The only thing for me to change this would have been to capture every available oil spot.
I would suggest adding a check for oil rigs owned and power plants present and would put the priority on building the plants if enough oil is available already. Throughout the whole game I killed hundreds of trucks trying to get to empty oil spots I had left on purpose. This is probably fine (although stupid if there is defence present), but it should be very low in priority if there are other options which could improve the situation for the bot.
Turtle AI is a nice variant and fun to play, thanks for your work
As far as I know the new "Turtle AI" is a Nullbot variant. With the 3.1.1 release Nullbot has sped up a lot since 3.1 (maybe there have been some improvements in the game itself too) which helps when I play the game on my older PC.
On topic: Turtle AI seems to have a huge priority for building oil rigs. I played a custom map (8p Julia something - similar to the old TeamWar maps) which has a lot of oil. Late in game when I had only 1 bot left I noticed that after an attack where I had eliminated all but one factory and most power plants that all the Turtle AI did was produce building units non-stop and sending them in different directions to uncaptured oil points which in itself is fine. But at that time it had more than 40 oil rigs already and only 2 power plants.
The empty oil spots were guarded by defence and the trucks naturally all died. The AI didn't produce a single building and never got into the game again. The only thing for me to change this would have been to capture every available oil spot.
I would suggest adding a check for oil rigs owned and power plants present and would put the priority on building the plants if enough oil is available already. Throughout the whole game I killed hundreds of trucks trying to get to empty oil spots I had left on purpose. This is probably fine (although stupid if there is defence present), but it should be very low in priority if there are other options which could improve the situation for the bot.
Turtle AI is a nice variant and fun to play, thanks for your work